


Faisla

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Baahubali fics [6]
Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Sivagami’s first order of business as Rajmata is to exile her husband from the palace. AU.





	Faisla

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



> For avani! 
> 
> Title means “decision, judgment” in Hindi.

After the chaos of the Queen’s death in childbirth and Martand’s failed coup have settled, it is time for Lady Sivagami, newly the Queen Mother of Mahishmati, to carry out her first order of business.

Namely, exiling her husband Bijjala Deva from the palace indefinitely.

Not a few councilors are aghast at the idea of exiling the elder prince of Mahishmati when he has committed no crime: drunkenness, crippled arm, and general utter failure of a human being notwithstanding. Especially just a few months after his brother had died, and considering he has just recently become a father.

It’s a rash political move, to say the least, especially since any claim Sivagami has to the throne is through her husband. But the Rajmata will brook no protests, and silences all of them with the steely glare that they are already learning to respect. No matter what storms this command unleashes, she will weather them all, for the alternative is not an option. She, Sivagami, knows the best thing for her sons is to be away from their father. He will play favorites, favor Bhalla at every turn, and he will never take Baahu to his heart.

She will be _damned_ before she lets this poor, orphaned child suffer like that.

She thinks of Gandhari, who was blinded to how her brother Shakuni poisoned her eldest son Duryodhan against his cousins, Gandhari, who never exiled him from Hastinapur, despite the evil he was working. Sivagami is not Gandhari, who blindfolded herself upon marrying a blind man; when Sivagami married the elder prince of Mahishmati, she knew she would have to keep her eyes twice as open to compensate.

She is no Gandhari, just as Bhalla will be no Duryodhan and Baahu will be no Bheem.

And so Bijjala is unceremoniously banished from the palace that very day, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few loyal companions. He spits and sputters, hurls a thousand curses upon his wife and his brother’s brat, threatens wildly, but in the end, that is her word, and her word is the law.

Bhalla and Baahu grow up unencumbered by a father who stands between them and fills Bhalla’s mind with poison. Bhalla is content with his mother and his brother, never desiring anything more, though he still has a tendency to drawl and act sullen when it suits him; perhaps there is nothing that can knock that out of him.

Not a few people remark to her how cruel it is to deprive her son of a father, to which she replies that her sons have every man in Mahishmati to stand as their father. And they have Kattappa, who happily adopts the fatherless boys of Mahishmati as his own, and defends them against the attempts Bijjala makes to kidnap his son away from the palace. Eventually, the murmurs are quietened, though not silenced, not that Sivagami ever pays them any heed.

She is not sure which son will become king and the other commander-in-chief, but at least that question will never be answered by an embittered father and a decades-old feud. Her eyes are wide open on _that_ point.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always had a burning desire to see how this would play out, though I acknowledge it is unlikely Sivagami would have deprived Bhalla of his father, at least at such an early stage. But I feel like without Bijjala’s malign influence, Bhalla would have had a chance to grow up in a decent human being, and I’ve always found it strange that Sivagami, for all her intelligence, never recognized the bad influence her husband was.
> 
> This is left open-ended, as I’m not sure who would become King in this AU (though I think Amarsena would still happen), but whichever way it goes, Bhalla never sinks to the depths he does in canon.


End file.
